The fight was for themselves
by VanillaMostly
Summary: Ahead of her was darkness. Whether win or lose... there'd be hell. This she knew. Yet, she still wanted to live. [ONESHOT]


**Something I wrote a while ago but FINALLY completed. Catching Fire spoilers. Don't own nothin'.**

* * *

The fight was for themselves

Maysilee's mother was weeping. Her father was so small suddenly, and so weak. Her parents were supposed to be the strong ones, the unafraid. But in that one crashing moment she was the one taking care of them, and amazingly because of this she felt calmer. "Mom, Dad," she whispered, kissing them on the cheek like they did for her when she was little. _Sweet dreams, my little girl. _ Except she now knew she would never be a little girl again.

"Mel?"

Her sister was standing in the corner, head ducked to the ground, back stiff; frozen. Maysilee touched her shoulder hesitantly. She shouldn't have, for her sister started to cry.

"May," Mel choked, "I should have volunteered, I-"

"No. We promised not to do that if one of us got picked, remember?"

"You would have volunteered for me." Tears were leaking from Mel's eyes. Maysilee brushed one away.

"There you go, breaking another of our promise again." It felt like ages ago, but really it was only last night, when they had laid in bed, looked at each other and made the pact they made every year. Not to volunteer for each other if the unthinkable happened; not to cry, because then the other one would cry. _Solemnly swear?_ Maysilee had asked, and her sister had nodded, and then they hooked pinkies like always.

Maysilee was breaking that promise now, too.

"You're acting like it's the last time you'll see me again," said Maysilee through her tears, trying to sound playful and teasing, but not sure if it succeeded. "Don't you have any faith in me?"

Mel wiped at her face and smiled over a runny nose and puffy red eyes. Maysilee had never loved her sister so much as she did then.

"Stupid, of course I do. You're smart, you're fast, you're brave..." She crushed Maysilee in an immobilizing hug. "You'll win."

Mel said this so confidently Maysilee's breath caught. "I'll... try," she whispered before hugging her twin back. They stayed like that, hearts beating against one another, breaths matching, and then their parents joined. And Maysilee swallowed down her doubt and anxiety all away. It wasn't the time for any of that. Right now, it was the time for just this: lull of warmth around her.

x

Their mentor was an old, blind man, who was so far gone in his little world you had to call him at least five times before he looked around. And even then, he didn't seem to know where he was.

Maysilee glanced at the other tributes. She didn't need to read minds to know they all thought the same:

_We're on our own._

"Why don't you guys get to know one another?" the escort suggested cheerfully, to cover up for the awkwardness as the old man sat, unblinking. "You'll be spending a lot of time with each other, you know. Best to make friends early!" She even clapped her hands. Maysilee was tempted to slap her surgery-masked face.

But she couldn't deny that the escort had a point. Other District's tributes formed alliances all the time, and more or less they tended to be more successful. There was safety in numbers, wasn't there? _Except there's one small catch..._ Maysilee might have seen the other tributes around town, or in school - since District Twelve wasn't very big - but she didn't know them except in passing. No surprise there. They were all from the Seam. She was the only one from town lucky enough to be picked.

Under the pretense of sipping tea, she eyed the other tributes more closely. Yes, merchant and Seam kids never flowed in the same crowds, but times were different. Maybe they could put aside their differences and work together, and all that cheesy crap?

She had managed to make eye contact with the girl when there was a clattering noise, followed by an indignant gasp from the escort.

One of the Seam guys had broken his cup. Not by accident, but by throwing it on the plush carpet (which spoke volumes on just how hard he threw it).

"You mean make friends so we can use them and kill them later?" said the boy, standing up. "Nice plan." He walked away.

The escort stared, flabbergasted, while the remaining Seam boy and girl exchanged a glance. Maysilee looked down at her teacup. _So much for that_, she thought bitterly, resenting the boy for being right and for extinguishing her only flame of hope. But mostly she was angry at herself.

There would only be one victor in this Game. Why did she keep forgetting that?

x

She plastered on her best smile for the Capitol- her father always did say she had the sweetest grin. The thought of Mel watching her from home ("_You'll win_") was what got her through. The ceremony, the training, the interview... One by one, the days ticked by, while the most dreaded day fast approached: the kickoff of the Quell.

Forty-eight tributes, one winner. In other words, forty-seven dead, one alive. Memories of the past Games' footage flashed in Maysilee's head. Children with their heads decapitated, missing legs, guts spilling...

The day before the Quell, she threw up her whole dinner into the fancy porcelain toilet.

An Avox drifted over dutifully to offer her a tray of white-laced handkerchiefs and mint-flavored mouthwash. Clearly, puking dinner was a common practice here. Maysilee took a handkerchief and wiped her mouth. Then she rinsed her face and hair free of puke, took a deep breath, and exited the bathroom.

As soon as she closed the door of the ladies' room, the men's room opposite hers opened. Out came Haymitch Abernathy. _He_ didn't look clammy and smell like bile and shrimp.

He raised a brow at her appearance, when normally he ignored her, Mr. No-Friends. "Yes?" Maysilee demanded, narrowing her eyes.

He deigned not to comment. Maysilee left him in her dust and returned to the table, where the escort, ever the dramatic, exclaimed, "What's the matter now, Miss Donner! You gave us quite a fright!"

"I'm fine," Maysilee said as graciously as possible with a clenched jaw. Haymitch sat down across from her, picking up a fork. "Toilet's jammed," he told the escort.

All attention was directed away from Maysilee after that. Across the table, Haymitch's poker face was flawless. Looking at him, Maysilee had an absurd urge to laugh.

She felt a lot better. Perhaps the puking helped.

x

Day Three of the Quell... Each time as the cannon sounded off in the distance, Maysilee's thumping heart told her one thing: _I'm still alive. That wasn't me._

It was a miracle. Everyone's prayers back home must be keeping her alive. She didn't know where the cameras were, so she touched her fingertips to her lips and held them to the sky, hoping her thanks would reach them somehow.

Maysilee wasn't stupid. She knew she couldn't rely on plain luck to survive. But as minutes lapsed into hours, more and more tributes fell dead, and Maysilee was still safe out of the radar, she started to imagine getting through the whole Quell this way.

Her delusion lasted her two minutes.

She was just bending down to dig through the roots of a tree, looking for something to eat that wasn't poisonous - being friends with the apothecary shopkeeper's daughter had its advantages - when she heard the rustling. Just in time, she scrambled back. A boy leapt down from the tree, a dagger in his hand. His front was dark-red and he stunk of blood. _Not his blood_.

He attacked.

x

There was struggle and pain and she had no time to think. She only _fought_. His dagger cut her arm and she bit her tongue to suppress her scream. _Get off, get off_, she shrieked in her head, and turning her face she saw one of her poisoned darts lying on the grass (it must have fallen out of her bag during the chaos), which she'd been using to kill those nasty squirrels.

Until now.

Shakily, she pushed his heavy body off with her good arm and crawled away. The boy - she recognized him as one of the District Three tributes - was twitching slightly... his mouth foaming white. His eyes of silent reproach froze her to her spot. But she saw something else too, before the boy took his final breath.

Fear.

Not fear of Maysilee, this she understood, but fear of something greater. Fear of death, not of what lay beyond it - but of what it meant. Death meant the loss of everything, of family, loved ones, friends... and a future he might have dreamed about when he was young; of falling in love; of holding a son and daughter one day in his arms. Fear of being forgotten thirty years from now, written off as one out of thousands, labeled by his district number, not even his name.

She closed his lifeless eyes. She was sad, but not because she had killed him; for that she felt no regret. She was sad because she knew why she killed this boy, and why she would no doubt continue to kill anyone who came her way...

Just like this boy, she shared the same fear of death, of a future lost. She wanted to live. Just like them all.

_We're all fighting to live_, she thought. _What does that make us? Not villains, not cowards, and definitely not heroes. Just... human._

She wiped away the tears that stung her eyes and gritted her teeth. Hatred for the Capitol renewed her strength. Shouldering her bag, she turned her back on her first kill just as the cannons sounded.

Ahead of her was darkness. Whether win or lose... there'd be hell. This she knew.

Yet, she still wanted to live.

x

Thirteen tributes left. More than two-thirds of the tributes dead.

That was when she saw Haymitch being cornered.

She didn't know what made her do it. Maybe she was thinking of the Puking Incident. Maybe she really was thinking about an alliance for her own benefit - which is what she told him, later. Whatever the reason was, almost subconsciously she reached for her bag, steady and quiet, and used one of her poisoned blowdarts to save Haymitch's ass.

If Haymitch was even an ounce grateful, he didn't show it. He might have looked a bit impressed, though. That was enough, Maysilee supposed.

But recalling him breaking that teacup, Maysilee wondered if she had just wasted a perfectly good blowdart for nothing.

Maybe not.

"Allies?" asked Haymitch, walking over and offering his hand.

She accepted it, as naturally as if she had always been waiting to do so.

x

Unfortunately, just because he was strong and, well, _seemingly_ smart, didn't mean he made for pleasant company. In fact he was rude, sarcastic, and a total pain. Maysilee was already growing irritated with his presence and they hadn't even been allies for a day.

"Can we stop?" she asked. They'd hiked nonstop for what must have been several hours. There was no way to tell time in this ever-sunny arena, but Maysilee's legs felt like jelly.

He didn't even spare her a glance. "No."

Not for the last time Maysilee wished she'd had the sense to save someone who wasn't such a _jerk_.

They continued to hike in silence, until Maysilee broke it again. (She'd been alone for so long, and damn Haymitch if he wanted to play a wooden corpse when he was fully capable of talking. _She_ didn't.)

"Who are you fighting for, Haymitch?" It was a question she'd been asking herself.

She watched him curiously from the corner of her eye, though she didn't expect him to answer. Even if he did, it probably wouldn't be a genuine reply anyway. They were on-air after all, and she and Haymitch weren't exactly close. They must have exchanged a maximum of five sentences all their lives, including after the Reaping. Why would he choose now to bare his soul to her, a snobby Townie as he surely saw her?

Maysilee, rolling her eyes, had given up on ever trying to have a conversation with this guy when he spoke. "For me." He turned and met her gaze. His eyes were gray and hard. "I'm fighting for me."

Maysilee was speechless for a moment. She swallowed, and looked away. "That's selfish," she muttered.

But Haymitch heard her. "Is it?"

The tilt of Haymitch's lips gave her pause. _He knows_, she realized. He knows that her answer was the same as his. Only it's taken her two days to admit hers to herself... and taken Haymitch only fifteen seconds to admit his.

She glared at Haymitch Abernathy and was tempted to wipe off his smug smirk with a blow to his nose. "Hurry up," she said loudly as she strode past him. "You're slow." Behind her she thought she heard him chuckle.

She hid her smile. God knows she'd never hear the end of it if Haymitch knew.

x

"Sleep. I'll stand watch."

"I'm not tired. _You _sleep."

Haymitch just snorted, which enraged Maysilee further.

"Quit playing the chauvinist pig! I _told_ you, I'm not tired..."

"Then let's keep going."

She frowned in annoyance. "What, a rest's out of the question?"

"You _are _tired."

"I'm just saying there's no harm in _not walking_ for, like, five minutes."

"Fine. But only five."

"Fine."

They found a burrow that seemed safe enough and crept inside. Maysilee hugged her knees close. She regretted asking for a rest now, because of course stupid Haymitch was right: she _was_ tired and sleepy to the bone. But she couldn't give him the satisfaction by falling asleep.

So she blurted, "Haymitch, tell me a story."

Haymitch was rarely caught off-guard, but this did it. "What?"

"You heard me. A story." The part of her that was embarrassed about blurting this out was won over by a real impatience to hear a story. She'd always loved stories as a kid; they'd kept nightmares away, and what were they in right now than the nightmare of nightmares?

"I don't know any stories."

"Oh, come on. Haven't your mother or father ever told you any?"

"My father died when I was three, and my mother was too busy finding ways to feed me and my little brother to have time for bedtime stories," Haymitch said. "Not everyone is so pampered as you, princess."

He obviously meant to mock her, to insult her, but Maysilee was too affected by the first part of what he said to feel the sting. "I'm sorry," she said softly, thinking of a childhood without a father, only a tired mother and food only occasionally on the table. A life she never had to go through... but if fate had placed her in Haymitch's shoes... _Fate._ "Win," she said suddenly, gripping his arm.

In the darkness of the burrow she could barely make out Haymitch's widened gray eyes. "What'd you say?"

Maysilee opened her mouth, then closed it. She was confused at herself. _His family needs him, more than mine needs me... so _he_ should be the one to win - but - that means I should die._ _I don't want to die... but I don't want Haymitch to die... What does that mean?_

"Nothing," she said, and stood up. "We should go."

x

A day later, this was what she thought as she faced Haymitch to say goodbye.

_I think I know what it means. It means that I don't want to be the one to kill you, because most likely I couldn't do it. Not to your little brother and your mother._

_But I want to live too,_ she added fiercely as an afterthought. _So if you were to kill me, I'd have to kill you._

They were both fighting for themselves, after all. The win was for their families, but the fight - that was only for themselves.

"Okay," Haymitch said as farewell. Didn't bother to spare her a glance, as usual. She felt a little disappointed, nevertheless, but it was just as well. Anything sentimental was pointless this close to the end. So she just shrugged and turned around.

_I hope I never see you again, _she said to Haymitch Abernathy silently before walking off.

x

_I am going to die,_ she thought, _in a field of flowers._

Where was that peace they said would come? She only felt pain, desperation, a gnawing desire for an angel to come save her, to heal her... No, not an angel. Her mother! She was a child again, to hell with dying in grace and courage; she tried to scream _Mama,_ but she found she couldn't. _The birds have slit my throat... of course I can't. _The sky was darkening... no, that was her vision... Didn't they say as you die, your past was supposed to flash before your eyes? Who said that - was it Mel? Mel always told great stories... If she was here now... _I would like to hear a good story_, thought Maysilee - incoherently. She was really dying, wasn't she...

Amidst her jumble of thoughts, something slowly surfaced. A voice.

"It's okay, it's okay." A hand was holding hers. This hand was warm, and she liked that. Who could it be? A hallucination? "It's okay, you'll be alright." _Kind lies... _Was it her father? No, this was a boy... A scared boy, even if he was trying not to sound that way.

She strained against her fading vision to see... The hand clutching hers tightened. _That hurts_, she thought, but it was a good kind of hurt. Gray eyes, were those gray eyes she was seeing or mere tricks on her mind?

"Yes, look at me. Don't close your eyes..."

_But I'm tired, Haymitch._

"Stay with me, Maysilee, you'll be okay..."

_You never called me Maysilee before._

Then (but she might have imagined this): "I'm sorry."

_Don't be. You came back._ Maysilee had hoped she would never see him again, but that wasn't true. She was happy, so happy, that he was here, this boy she knew for hardly a month. _If you knew, Haymitch... _She smiled sleepily.

There were a lot more things she wanted to tell him - like _idiot, get away... What if the birds came back? You have to fight! Win for your family, they need you! _And..._thank you. Please don't forget me. I can be a little selfish, can't I?_

x

x

x

Peace did come.


End file.
